meshy/django-schema-graph

An interactive graph of your Django model structure

Django Schema Graph

Django-schema-graph makes a colourful diagram out of your Django models. The diagram is interactive, and makes it easy to toggle models and apps on/off at will.

It looks like this:

Feature	Screenshot
Models
Apps
Both together
Graph editor

(Apologies that the images above don't work on PyPI. Check it out on GitHub.)

Installation

Install from PyPI:

pip install django-schema-graph

Add to INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'schema_graph',
    ...
]

Add to your URLs.

from schema_graph.views import Schema
urlpatterns += [
    # On Django 2+:
    path("schema/", Schema.as_view()),
    # Or, on Django < 2:
    url(r"^schema/$", Schema.as_view()),
]

Use

Browse to /schema/ (assuming that's where you put it in your URLs).

You can control access to this page using the SCHEMA_GRAPH_VISIBLE setting, or by subclassing schema_graph.views.Schema and overriding access_permitted. By default the page is only visible when DEBUG is True, because we assume that you don't want to leak sensitive information about your website outside of local development.

Support

Tests run on sensible combinations of:

• Python (3.10-3.11)
• Django (3.2-4.1)

If you're stuck on old version of Python or Django, you may consider installing old versions. They will probably have fewer features, and there will be no support for them.

The last version to support Python 2.7 and 3.5 was 1.2.0. The last version to support Python 3.6 to 3.9 was 2.2.1.

The last version to support Django 1.8 was 1.2.0. The last version to support Django 1.9 to 3.1 was 2.2.1.

Alternatives

• django-spaghetti-and-meatballs is great. At the time of writing, it offers a lot more detailed information on the models in the diagram, but doesn't allow them to be turned on/off in the page.

django-schema-graph's Issues

Add showcase to readme

The readme should start with explaining what the app does. A picture / gif is the easiest way to explain.

Abstract models should be hidden

django-oscar uses abstract models throughout. The sidebar and graph is full of them.

It may be a bit hard to hide them, as they may be part of indirect links between models.

Many to many through connection

Note to self: make sure many-to-many connections with explicit through tables are represented nicely. Are they represented on the graph twice?

Make graphs linkable

It'd be nice if we could link to graphs showing a pre-filtered set of nodes.

I'm not sure what the best approach is for this.

Thoughts:

Should we represent the things to show in the graph, or the things we're excluding?

Is there a way to make the URL fairly readable without making it huge? Do either of these things matter? Which takes priority?

How do we load in the state when the page is rendered?

How will old links work as things are added/removed from a schema?

Updating the URL as the graph is manipulated seems to be better than having a "create link" button somewhere.

Let sites choose to show the page when DEBUG=False

It's a pain for sites that want to display this graph page in production, because by default, the page is only accessible when DEBUG is True.

We should ensure that it can be accessed, as required.

Allow static generation

The output of this project is one HTML file and one JS file. It would be valuable to be able to make a static export, so that people can embed them in their docs without needing to run a Django server.

Disabling an app should collapse it

When disabling an app in the sidebar, the app should auto-collapse.

Some data missing from graph

Missing from graph:

• Abstract base models
• Inheritance
• Proxy model connections

Use poetry for requirements/deployment

pyproject.toml seems way shinier than setup.py

https://python-poetry.org/docs/libraries/
https://python-poetry.org/docs/pyproject/#packages

Export graph data

Gephi [ https://gephi.org ] is a handy graph visualization tool, as is Graphviz [ https://graphviz.org ]. It would be cool if it were easy to just export the raw graph data here, and then import it a popular graph visualization tool of choice to run graph algorithms on it and study it further.

[Feature Request] Toggling schema views programmatically

Hey, firstly thanks for creating this, it's awesome. This is more of a question/feature request rather than an issue.

Can we toggle schema views programmatically without removing apps from our settings file.? (Example, different url for models etc.). I am not sure if this is possible.

Inconvenient display

I have the first main modal, the second base model and many Subclasses from the second model. Subclasses have ForeinKeys to the first model and they are displayed in a very confusing way.

Consider adding option to disable physics

This may be a solution for issues like #19, to allow manual layout.

Reduce emphasis on models without any data

It is not uncommon to have apps installed with no data in any of its models. It may be unused features, or it could be abstract models, etc.

Maybe empty models can be reduced in size, and given a different color, and/or pushed to the outside of the graph where possible.

A toggle might be necessary to activate this feature, to avoid hitting every single model with a query, but maybe it is possible to start with emphasis given to models that already have a cached status of being non-empty.

Allow models/apps to be turned on/off

Turning models on and off should add and remove them from the graph.

Turning on/off an app should add/remove all the app's models.

Replace loading bar with something more user-friendly

The loading bar at the top can be hard to see.

We should show something sooner, and give people access to the graph sooner.

Make new table-based graph-editor

The sidebar is pretty crowded, so adding info to it is going to become cumbersome.

#68 introduces some improvements, but if we had a tabular interface, we could do much more advanced stuff -- show tags, show number of connections, search, sort, etc.

Cannot add item: item with id x/y already exists

When using oscar-stores, I get:

Error: Cannot add item: item with id stores/OpeningPeriod already exists
    at i.value (main.js:59)
    at i.value (main.js:59)
    at new i (main.js:59)
    at l (main.js:59)
    at a.mounted (main.js:59)
    at Yt (main.js:7)
    at Qi (main.js:7)
    at Object.insert (main.js:7)
    at S (main.js:7)
    at _e.__patch__ (main.js:7)
Vt @ main.js:7

Models which have no connections should be separated from the others

The models which have no connections at all should be disabled by default, and perhaps shown on a separate panel/tab because the method of graphing them is completely different, and a fixed grid layout would be better for those.

Add collapse-all/expand-all shortcuts to sidebar

main.js not found

Getting the following error out of the box.

Couldn't find main.js in the project. Is that expected?
GET http://dev.api.beeswax.com/static/schema_graph/main.js net::ERR_ABORTED 404 (Not Found)